Sunderland City Council to vote on redistributing £500,000 savings from cuts to key frontline services

Petra Silfverskiold

Sunderland City Council is aiming to redistribute the £500,000 it is making in savings to other frontline services.

Council bosses aim to spend the cash they are saving by moving to fortnightly bin collections into services, including grass cutting, removing fly-tipped rubbish and environmental enforcement

The move is to be discussed by Sunderland City Council’s Cabinet next week.

The proposals are part of the council’s revenue budget for the next financial year – 2017/18 – which goes to Cabinet on February 8.

Cabinet is also looking to find funding for youth activities and is considering proposals to boost funding for inward investment and tourism in recognition of the need to attract more business investors and visitors into the city.

After listening to public feedback to the recent libraries review, Cabinet members are also looking at putting a further £75,000 into the library services budget to lessen the impact of proposed savings.

“We’ve tried very hard to protect communities from the worst of the spending cuts by absorbing most of the impact ourselves.

“Seven years of cuts under the Government’s austerity programme have left us with very little room for manoeuvre and there’s no doubt that people are going to notice changes to the services the council provides because of the cuts we’re having to make.

“But we are listening to what people are telling us and within the very limited resources we have available, we are trying to take their views on board. This is reflected in the proposals we’ll be looking at when Cabinet meets on Wednesday, February 8.”

The council has also confirmed that it plans to commission domestic violence services, with a renewed focus on supporting survivors of domestic violence and their children to build resilience and independence when the current contract comes to an end in June.

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he council has already had to save £250million from its budget since 2010 as a result of Government funding cuts and spending pressures. It needs save a further £74million by 2020. For 2017/18 it must reduce its spending by more than £46million.